'The Losers' has entertaining action

LOS ANGELES - It may not be wise to name a film The Losers ($28.98 DVD/$35.99 Blu-ray). Sort of an A-Team, it involves five good tough guys who have been burned by the CIA during their mission to bring down a South American drug lord. So they decide to take on the bad guys themselves.

Once upon a time we saw a lot of stories like this - The Wild Bunch, The Dirty Dozen - where guys considered "bad" either redeem themselves or show that they aren't really shady. In this case the quintet is played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Chris Evans, Idris Elba, Columbus Short, and Oscar Jaenada. They call themselves cute names like Roque, Pooch, and Cougar. Helping them is a hottie (Zoe Saldana) who may know who burned them.

Directed by Sylvain White (Stomp the Yard), The Losers is kind of a throwback to a straight action film, occasionally referencing its comic-book roots with some freeze-frame images. Mostly, the film sticks to more frenetic - quick, close cuts - style.

It's pretty predictable - including Saldana never breaking a fingernail during all the fight scenes - but passably entertaining for these sorts of films.

Your interest in biopics about bands and musicians may depend on what you thought of their music in the first place. Not a fan of the Runaways, an all-girl rock band of the 1970s, I wasn't excited about a movie called The Runaways ($27.96/$34.95), although I can see how music video director Floria Sigismondi would be.

Women always have had a difficult time claiming their place in rock and roll. When Cherie Currie and Joan Jett (played by Dakota Fanning and Kristen Stewart, respectively) tried to break into the business, few took them seriously. It was record artist and producer Kim Fowley who gave them a break - if break is what you call it - putting them together with some other teen girls to form a band that was a mixture of women's empowerment, exploitation, and novelty. Fowley, a showman, trained them and served as their Svengali, selling them more as sexual objects than liberated women. The musical aspect of the Runaways was hard-edged but not particularly inventive, and like many other bands of the times, it tried to emulate its heroes, like the Rolling Stones or David Bowie.

It's not an unexpected story, and perhaps because the Runaways were more a footnote in rock than game changers such as the Doors or Ray Charles, Sigismondi's interesting but not compelling film feels at cross-purposes because it's about both Currie and Jett, although Fanning and Stewart prove themselves again to be young actresses to watch.

Another curious title for a film is Cop Out ($28.98/$35.99) from Kevin Smith, which can be read as a kind of dig if you put the two words together. A tried and tired buddy cop film has Bruce Willis and 30 Rock's Tracy Morgan paired up to find a valuable baseball card that was stolen from Willis' character and was supposed to pay for his daughter's wedding. There are a few jokes, a couple of OK moments, and that's it.

In the BBC America series Being Human (Season 1 $34.98/$39.98), two young men move into an apartment in Bristol, England, that turns out to be haunted by the ghost of a young woman named Annie (Lenora Crichlow), whose husband has killed her. Since Mitchell (Aidan Turner) is a vampire and George (Russell Tovey) is a werewolf, they are not overly frightened.

They are frightened by others, though. The pair work in a hospital to cover up their identities and try to blend in without having to kill anybody.

The six-episode Being Human, which returned recently for eight new ones, is a notch above most of the supernatural shows on television. Its trio of flatmates is likable and, like all twentysomethings, has problems fitting in, which is why the series can strike a chord. At its core, Being Human is a well-made drama with wit, but it still gives you enough of a taste of the bloody stuff for some chills and thrills.

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From left, Zoe Saldana as Aisha, Chris Evans as Jensen, Idris Elba as Roque and Columbus Short as Pooch as members of 'The Losers.' Enlarge

DVD reviews of 'The Losers,' 'The Runaways,' plus a few additonal film suggestions and TV-on-DVD choices.